I. The presentation (chap. 26:1-56). And now the hour of the Lord's betrayal is at hand. He is aware of it and master of all:no one takes His life from Him, but He lays it down of Himself. Her prescient love who anoints Him for His burial brings out the traitor in the person of one of the twelve. The Lord indicates him at the final supper, where He institutes beforehand the memorial of His death, and explains its deep and blessed meaning. He predicts the scattering of the sheep, and to Peter his fall. Through all this part, nothing is more apparent than His entire control of all through which He moves.

Gethsemane (the " oil-press") has another character. His shrinking from the cup before Him was here part of His perfection. He could not take it as His own will, but only as His Father's. Sorrowful unto death, He finds none to watch with Him. The shadow of the cross is beginning to isolate Him from those who are the chosen companions of His path. The last dread isolation is yet to come, but the presence of it is already in the depths of His soul. He is perfect in entire surrender to His Father's will, while His followers only show their want of accord with it. Sleeping when they should be waking, they are fighting when He is giving Himself up. What could their swords do but dishonor Him who could have had twelve legions of angels for His defense had not the Word of God claimed His fulfillment of it? They forsake Him next and flee.

2. The offering (chap. 26:57-28:). He had now presented Himself for the offering, and it must be manifested as an unblemished one. The false witnesses cannot prove His guilt even before His enemies. He must be condemned for His own true witness, and that alone. As Son of God it is that the Jewish tribunal reject Him, without and against all evidence, and He hides not His face from shame and spitting. Peter's fall only fulfills His prophetic words. The traitor comes forward to attest His innocence-the highest witness he is qualified to give. But the Jews consummate their guilt, buying Aceldama with the price of blood :a potter's field to bury strangers in, the involuntary prediction of that to which they were self-condemned; the world has been for them ever since a burial-ground for strangers.

The charge before the Gentile governor is that He claims to be King of the Jews. His accusers again prove nothing, and He answers nothing. The double witness of the judge himself, and of Heaven in his wife's dream, is that He is a " just man." At the passover, (a beautiful intimation of its meaning,) a prisoner is released. Pilate, anxious to save Jesus, makes it a question whether He shall release Him to them, or Barabbas, a noted sinner. The people choose Barabbas, and the Lord takes the cross instead of him, another striking testimony of the meaning of His death. Pilate washes his hands and delivers Him up. The infatuated Jews imprecate His blood upon themselves. Mocked of the soldiers, gall mingled with His drink, His vesture parted, He is crucified. His salvation of others, His faith in God, is thrown in His teeth, and even by the malefactors with whom He is numbered.

But now the true and exceptional character of the cross comes out. The darkness for three hours over the land is but the type of the deeper darkness, the due of our sins, which is upon His soul. God has forsaken Him:the solitary exception in all God's ways with the righteous. Crying again with a loud voice of unexhausted strength, none taking His life from Him, but laying it down of Himself, " He dismisses His spirit."

The effects of His death are immediate. The vail which forbad access to God is rent from top to bottom. The darkness into which He went He has displayed, and God is in the light. His power raises the dead, the governmental witness, as we have already seen, to the removal of sin. The Gentile believes, but the Jews hardened in unbelief, which is soon to be the most effectual witness to His glory, seal up the stone and set a watch against the third day.

3. The acceptance of the offering (chap. 28:). And now we have the full and formal acceptance of His work made known by resurrection. Galilee, not Jerusalem, is here the appointed meeting-place with the eleven, although the women see Him and receive His message. The chief priests bribe the soldiers to tell an incredible story to their own shame. The nation is exhibited in obdurate unbelief. He whom they reject has all authority in heaven and earth, and sends forth His disciples to disciple unto His kingdom, but in the triune name, the revelation of which marks the new dispensation as now come. He Himself is with them in unchanging faithfulness and love "unto the end of the age."